With the lifting of several Covid restrictions, Renaissance Academy is in the process of reopening the school's Space Academy with a new name for a new start. Let's all welcome The Space Place at Renaissance Academy into the Space EdVentures group of space centers.
"Where did that name come from?" you ask. Bracken Funk explained it to me this way. "How many of our students and crew use The Space Place as the slang name for the Space Academy? So I thought let's make it official and rebrand as The Space Academy. It's short, easily remembered, and right to the point. We do space and we do it well. Let's be The Space Place!
The name has grown on me over the last few weeks. I like it. Yes, let's be The Space Place. The name is more kid and teen friendly than The Space Academy and that is who we serve through our Young Astronauts and Voyager Clubs. Besides, the school already uses the name academy in its name.
Tune in weekly to The Troubadour to learn more about The Space Place and how you,your friends, and family can participate in our programs. And for you students at Renaissance Academy, those sounds you've heard coming from the Starship Voyager are a sign of great things to come.
Mr. Williamson
The Space Place Hosts High School Students from American Heritage School
The Space Place at Renaissance Academy
March 26, 2021
It was all go aboard the Starship Voyager at The Space Place on Friday. After three weeks of programming DMX lights, cleaning, reorganizing, debugging, intensive Thorium coding, installing massive subwoofers, and many minor cosmetic touches, the Starship Voyager flew for the first time Friday since the Covid shutdown last March. The ship's shakedown crew came from Alex DeBirk's high schoolers from American Heritage School in American Fork. The students were involved in their school's science and physics camp. The mission was the cumulativing event of the camp.
The crew flew a mission written by Alex DeBirk. The mission was designed to incorporate complex physics problems specifically written to challenge this group of gifted students.
Bracken and Lejana Funk staffed the mission. Bracken reimagined the standard concept of a mission control room by programming Thorium to do many ship tasks automatically thus freeing up the flight director to focus more on the students and less on the controls, sounds, and videos. Bracken monitored the controls. Alex Debirk was Flight Director with control of the microphone and sound effects. This method of flying opens the door for many of the Space Center's retired flight directors to return from time to time to run missions without needing to learn how to operate the ship's controls.
With the success of this first mission, The Space Place and it's flagship Voyager is preparing for .............. let me finish that sentence with a few lines from the movie "2010: The Year We Make Contact"
Here are a few pictures of the Voyager's return to space last Friday.
The long walk from the Transition Room to the Voyager's Bridge.
A few turns later and you find yourself on the bridge
The Voyager's Bridge.
Left Forward Bridge. Right Aft Bridge where the
Command Tactical Station is located
From the Archives. Ten Years Ago This Month
The Phoenix has a New View Screen (And Other Things)
Hello Troops,
We had a good weekend punctuated with a couple hiccups. Alex stopped me as I walked into the office Friday evening. It was almost 6:00 P.M. and I had several things I needed to do for the Overnight Camp at 7:00 P.M.
"Our main viewer is down. I couldn't get it to turn on." Alex was neck deep in a Phoenix private mission so he had to speak quickly. "I'm using the two side TV's only."
I asked if he'd clicked the input button on the remote. He said he had but I wasn't convinced. I'm usually pretty good at making what some classify as impossible, possible. I found the remote, walked into the ship, told the kids to carry on and pretend I wasn't there and fiddled with the viewer. It was obvious the TV had power - the red light on the front control panel flickered whenever I pushed a remote button, but no matter what I did, no matter which button combination I pushed, that TV wouldn't cooperate. I pronounced it DOA when I came out of the ship.
I was left with one choice - I had to purchase another TV for the Phoenix. The old set would be removed and taken to the repair shop for diagnosis. If it could be repaired at a reasonable cost then it would be. If it couldn't, then it would be carted off to recycling - or whatever else you do with dead large screen TVs.
The Phoenix private mission ended at 7:00 P.M. That gave Dave and Alex just 20 minutes or so to come up with an alternative plan for the Overnight camp. They found an old 24 inch TV in the Animation Studio and installed it. Mind you, it looked odd having this large wall of black plastic with a 24 inch screen shining through but would the campers know? Most likely they wouldn't - thinking what they saw was how the ship was designed.
The second hiccup was discovered around 8:00 P.M. Several volunteers failed to show up to work the camp. That immediately put us into 'problem solving' mode. Within fifteen minutes we had the problem worked out. I want to thank Erick B. for answering the email call for additional staff and coming when he did. It made a big difference.
Saturday morning I called Brady Young, a Voyager Flight Director and a member of Best Buy's Geek Squad, and explained the problem. Brady said he would talk to the store's manager and see if they would sell us a TV at cost. He called back saying he'd worked out a deal.
Later that afternoon, Bill Schuler picked me up in his truck and we drove to Lehi's Best Buy. We met Brady near the Geek Squad's area. He introduced me to the asst. manager and we worked out a deal. One thousand dollars later and we were out the door with a nice 47 inch LCD television for the Phoenix's main viewer. We got back to the Space Center just as the afternoon mission was wrapping up.
The Center closed at 5:00 P.M. Alex and Jon stayed until 7:30 P.M. installing the new TV. It wasn't easy, considering the number of cables that had to be stretched across the Phoenix's ceiling.
The new TV is in and, according to Alex, looks awesome!
"There is one problem," Alex said when he called me to deliver the news. "Whenever we switch between inputs, the TV displays the word 'Component' in the corner for a few seconds. It's something we can't make go away so it will be something we have to live with."
Alex and Jon will come up with some "sci fi" explanation for the word's appearance in the context of the Phoenix being a starship etc. We are good and dishing out the bull when necessary.
I'm anxious to see the TV in action on Monday. I hope it's worth the $1000 paid. I want to thank Bill, Alex and Jon for helping with this small crisis.
Mr. Williamson
Imaginarium Theater
The Best Videos From Around the World Edited for a Gentler Audience
